Review: De'Longhi La Specialista Arte Evo Espresso Machine With Cold Brew

The counter space in my kitchen is at a premium. It’s valuable real estate, and every square inch matters. So when a new espresso machine arrives at my door, I always have to play a high-stakes game of countertop appliance Tetris to figure out how everything will fit—or who needs to get banished into a cupboard. When the De'Longhi Specialista Arte Evo rolled into my kitchen, I was ready to make tough decisions.

From the box’s size, I was sure the rice cooker or the food processor would have to be exiled. When I got the De'Longhi out of its box, though, my appliances breathed a sigh of relief. This is a svelte espresso machine, and it fits perfectly without sending any of my favorite appliances to a pantry gulag. Things were off to a good start, and it only got better—mostly.

Slim and Consistent

The first couple of shots I pull out of any espresso machine will usually require some finagling. When an espresso machine has an internal burr grinder, that’s just one other thing I have to dial in from scratch. By the second shot, I was happy with what I was getting out of the Specialista.

The espresso poured into the cup in two streams of luxurious caramel-gold liquid, the crema gathering on top in an even layer. I changed the settings and pulled more tester shots to see how it performed with different grind consistencies and amounts for testing purposes, but by that second shot, I knew I’d found the sweet spot.

Something I always like about De'Longhi espresso machines is the knobs. A lot of different models from the company up and down the price spectrum have really good knobs. The ones here are a joy to use. They're raised from the surface of the control panel, and the outward face has the signature concentric circles of machined steel; the sides are adorned with textured metal accents. One controls the amount of coffee to grind, and the other toggles between brewing modes.

When you turn the grind knob, there's a little resistance, just enough to feel like you have very fine control. The mode knob has a satisfying click when you switch from one mode to another. How much you enjoy using a device is important, and these little details make the Specialista Arte Evo feel good to use.

The Specialista Arte Evo comes in at a delightfully narrow 11.2 inches, sparing quite a bit of my counter space—especially since this is taking the place of two appliances, an espresso machine and a coffee grinder. There are smaller espresso machines—the new KitchenAid Semi-Automatic Espresso Machine is about as narrow as the Specialista—but most that have a built-in grinder are a little wider.

Some Assembly Required

The Specialista's built-in conical burr grinder can grind coffee fine enough for espresso and coarse enough for drip or other brewing methods, so it's capable of replacing a stand-alone grinder. There is one little quirk, though. The portafilter can't slot into place underneath the grinder unless you attach the “grinding and tamping guide.” This component is a short cylinder of plastic that locks onto the portafilter to guide the grounds directly into the basket and help direct the tamp down onto the grounds.

It's weird. The guide doesn't feel as high-quality as other parts of the Specialista, almost like a cheap 3D-printed plastic. If you try to slot the portafilter underneath the grinder without the guide, you have to hold it there the whole time, and the grinder will likely spill some grounds into the drip tray. It feels like the grinding and tamping guide was added as a fix to the issue of the grounds spilling out.

There's another part of the Specialista that feels a little slapdash: the tiny little drip tray that goes on top of the big drip tray. Like a booster seat for your espresso cup, this second drip tray raises your cup a little closer to the portafilter. At first, I wondered why this was included, and then I tried pulling a couple of shots without it.

As soon as the espresso started flowing out of the portafilter, I saw the problem. Coffee streams out of the portafilter in opposite directions as the spouts point outward slightly. It's a small enough angle that you won't notice if your cup happens to be close to the bottom of the portafilter. But if you don't use the drip tray, well, you see where I'm going with this?

The annoying thing is that these are issues De'Longhi appears to be aware of, given that the machine ships with two fixes to solve them. Instead of fixing the problems, you're given the tools to fix them yourself. But with the fixes in place, the Specialista reliably produces great coffee. It's an espresso machine that makes you want to make espresso, and that's a rare and valuable thing.

A Foregone Conclusion

One of the marquee features of the Specialista Arte Evo is its cold-brew setting. De'Longhi says it was painstakingly developed with the Specialty Coffee Association to provide fresh-brewed cold brew in minutes instead of hours. It's a tempting proposition, but like most attempts at rushing cold brew's slow alchemy, the Specialista Arte Evo doesn't quite deliver.

Here's how it works: You fill the water tank of the espresso machine with cold water, and the machine then pushes that water through the grounds in your portafilter without using the internal heating element. It pushes through enough water for one cup in roughly three to four minutes. The resulting brew is often weak, bitter, and more than a bit watery. I tried it with several roasts, blends, and grind settings, and each time I got a cup of bland-to-OK tepid cold brew. That's the thing: It doesn't cool anything. There is no internal cooling unit. The “cold extraction” De'Longhi's marketing materials mention is just room-temperature extraction.

The Specialista Arte Evo isn't the first machine to promise quick cold brew, and it's not the first machine to fail to achieve that goal, nor will it be the last. There's a simple reason: Everything you love about cold brew—the smooth flavor, the natural sweetness balanced with the tang of bitterness—can only be achieved with time.

Heat speeds up chemical reactions, and cold slows them down. When you have coffee grounds in cold water in a cold environment, the extraction occurs slowly and gently. That's what pulls out all those hidden flavors. I love an iced espresso drink as much as anyone else, and the Specialista Arte Evo is good at making espresso, so it's good at making those. If you're looking for a machine that can make great cold brew, you're way better off saving several hundred dollars and buying one of these cold-brew pots or any of the other options in our Best Cold Brew Makers guide.

The Specialista Art Evo is an excellent espresso machine, and I loved using it. If the time it took to put a destined-for-failure cold-brew setting into the machine had just been spent solving its design issues, you'd have the makings of an incredible machine. But in its current state, it's sabotaged by flaws that should have been solved before it even went into production.